I've had loads of experiences accumulating scars and skills during my 35-year cartooning career. Lately I've been sharing them with students during my visits to campuses here and there.

Since 1984, when I started out tethered to old-fashioned slide projection technology, I've been presenting illustrated talks to audiences from Los Angeles to London. Now that I've translated my presentations to PowerPoint, I can more easily tailor my talks to the specific needs of the schools that invite me to speak.

Here are descriptions of varied slideshows I've put together lately.

Angst & Pratfalls:
A Career Overview

This self-introduction skims the highlights of my cartooning career by interspersing light-hearted drawings with panel-by-panel readings of my comic-book stories. (The “underground” flavor and gay content of this slideshow make it best-suited for mature audiences.)

Stuck Rubber Baby:
Notes on a Graphic Novel's Creation

In this slideshow I recount how my graphic novel grew out of my own formative encounters with the Civil Rights Movement when I was a teenager and while my parallel struggle with my gay identity was underway.

Styles & Tricks:
Making Friends With One's Inner Cartoonist

This one's for art students or cartoon fans who enjoy knowing more about the craft of creating comics and funny drawings. I explores how varied drawing techniques connect differently with readers’ emotions and expectations, using the my own stylistic odyssey to illustrate my ideas.

The Swimmer With a Rope In His Teeth

This is in part a straightforward illustrated reading of my adaptation of Jeanne Shaffer’s fable about misguided uses of spiritual revelations (which was published by Prometheus Press in 2004) and in part a discussion of the story's genesis and a discourse on my reasons for adopting what everybody agrees was an unsual drawing style to tell it with.

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